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Ok. So yes..... I've now admitted to myself that I've lost all
rationality!!
My son is 4 and that I'm even entertaining this idea is probably crazy!
So here goes..... *And let me preface this by saying I have NO knowledge
of R/C anything!! *My son, who will be 5 in February, loves trucks....
monster trucks, tonka trucks, trucks gone wild, jeeps, etc. *I've bought
little small kid friendly r/c stuff before but they can't go out and get
wet. *He spends his afternoons building mud holes in my backyard... Every
afternoon...and drives his tonka trucks and monster trucks through them.
He also loves ramping them off stuff and climbing obstacles he can find.
So my search began.... An R/C truck that was waterproof!..... And so
here I am... No thanks to my friend who told me I was crazy for even
spending over $100 on a truck for my boy but kept sending me links to
youtube videos of all these $100's trucks tearing through mud holes and
flying over jumps.. yeah, I liked them but still not convinced until I saw a video of a guy chunking a 1/10 into a pond etc *video....
I'd found what I needed until I saw the price tag, but still want to get
one so bad but hate to be called unreasonable or irrational, cuz that
ain't me... hehe. *So I found this group of obvious enablers in this forum so*
with some good experience talking, I need advice. *Am I crazy? *I was
looking at the 1/16 because of the price is better but wanted to ensure that*water proofness, toughness, durability, maintenance, etc was similar to what was demo'd in the video. *Remember, this is a 5 year old, or is this just a
ridiculous idea and I need to move on. *If so, can anyone suggest another
waterproof option in a more reasonable price range?

young drivers learn faster, and will say have more skills than older guys, I've seen young kids at the track flying $800.00 buggys over ramps, and landing like a cat. My youngest (4yr) already asked me for a truck , so I build a mini erevo for her to drive, she watches me fixing the trucks, and she offers for help. It is nice your kid is interested on the hobby, so a mini will be a good starting point, the main difference between those two option is one has a brushless system and the other is a brushed motor, meaning brushless motor last longer, less maintenance, produce more speed, and cost more, brushed motor are cheap to replace, but won't last too much, need some maintenace. IMO it will be perfect for your little driver, once he mastered you can upgrade to a brushless system. Traxxas are good trucks, cheap to fix, and you will find parts everywhere.

Just to give you a bit of info
I have a mini revo for myself n my 5 yo daughter
It's brushless for both

I've found that in training mode it was still quite fast so what I did was the tranny swap to give it more torque n slower speeds.
Reason being is she likes driving into curbs and driving on grass/dirt. With this I changed out the wheels for the 16th scale summit to give it a better height. I changed the pinion on motor to 16tooth with a 50 tooth spur gear.
She first started to drive at 4yo and recently turned 5. She can hold the transmitter pretty good now with throttle control n steering. But reverse will have to take 2 seconds for her to switch her holding position.
I can say anything for the 10th(8th) scale summit since I'm waiting for one to be delivered.

I will say this tho, look for a 2.4g transmitter, comes with the brushless 16th scale or the 2.4 summit
For the am transmitter(radio) there's a long antenna and that can become an eyes worst enemy.poking.

There's going to a bit more maintenance when running in a mud pit, with bearings getting seized.
There's a lot to learn and enjoy in this hobby. There's going to frustrating times and hopefully a lot more happy times.
If you have a hobby shop near by they can usually assist you in what needs to be done or fix when broken. BUT don't believe eve drugging they say...

Thanks y'all so much for all the input. Seeing that your little guys/gals are using/playing with these trucks makes me feel better. Not quite son"irrational and unreasonable" about my decision! Lol. Sounds like if any truck can withstand use and maybe a little torture it's these!

Ok... So daddykins...... If I was buying a summit already the height/ground clearance would already be taken care of.... Correct? I found the gears you discussed changing. That's a cheap modification. What else would you suggest getting or altering right away for longer run time more durability, etc? An extra battery to keep one charged? Lol

if you do end up getting a brushless one, just stick with one stock battery at first, thats what i am doing for my nephew for chistmas and i also bought him a lipo for when he complains its slower than the brushless maxx and revo i will have with me lol. in my opinion, i would try and go with brushless just becuz it will save you in the long run. you can start out with one stock battery and then you have the choice of running two stock batteries w/ a parralel connector, then you can go to one lipo battery, then two lipo's in parallel. a lot of choices to gradually add more power to the truck. hope i helped and i am sure he is gonna go nuts no matter what you get him but, also forgot, if you do go with brushed check out the videos on youtube on how to break in a brushed motor. it will help your motor last way longer than just taking it out of the box and running it around. most of all just have funnnnn!

Congrats on the summit vxl.
Read through the manual so you'll get all the basic info in needing to get this thing running smoothly.
Training mode limits half the power (50%) I found it fast sometimes for a beginner
Make sure you practice on open grounds so there's more errors to be made while learning

Have fun

It's always nice to have one battery charging while your playing.
Don't charge more than 6 hrs if using the wall charger that came with it. It will continue to charge so try to remember to unplug it

Awesome. Thanks!! So now I'm going through trying to fig all the things that will break first so we don't have a truck on Christmas day we can't drive because it's broken already. LOL. So on te list is stock e-revo drive shafts, e-revo progressive rockers, and set of rustler axles for the metal ball stud U joints, RPM A-arms (front and back?), and heat sink and fan. Do I do dual fan for ESC? Or single enough on motor? Wasn't sure flipping gears how much temp would increase or how big of a deal that was in this case? New servo? Want to get the "common breakers" so we're prepared....

Do you have a hobbyshop nearby? If so you don't have to stock too much stuff
I've bought quite a few things from JRC(jennys rc)on eBay. Free shipping on 16th scale parts.
If ur going to stock a bit then driveshaft for mini revo is good with p2 rockers.
If you get the rpm arms I'd wait til one a arm breaks then install.
The tranny flip is what I did as I mentioned, but you'll have to take to tranny(center gear box) out to do. I don't want to overwhelm you with all this info but it looks like you're off to a great start.
I never ran a fan so I got no experience on that. I think you can get away with a fan for now with the colder weather.
I have a heatsink for the motor n it lowers the temperature down

Not sure. If so... At least 45ish minutes but I'm up that way fairly regular. Just not sure what's available there. I know there's a hobby lobby. Ha but not sure what good they'll do. Lol. I'll have to see if there are any actually HSs here. Thanks!! I'll check out JRC. True on the fan. It can definitely wait in this weather. Wasn't thinking lol!! One more thing... Someone suggested a T-bone skid plate. I found these but they offer a chassis skid and a bumper. I wonder if the chassis skid is enough? Didn't love the bumper? No overwhelming here!... Ha. Maybe a little but I'm a google so I'm quick to find a how to if needed. Already learned how to do the tranny swap...heheh. Now to actually do it!

You could always get the 3pc T-bone set and not use the bumper.
It's a bit more in price than just buying the 1pc chassis skid but if you decide you want it one day you'll have it for some protection.
Most LHS around will carry Traxxas parts, even BestBuy around here now